Джон Макдональд - S*E*V*E*N

“I don’t know. I guess I’d lie a little. Either say I didn’t at all, or it was a real little one.”

“You and I know better than that.”

“God, yes!”

“So the confession itself would be a little dishonest.”

“I guess so.”

“Then you’d make it just to gratify yourself. At his expense and mine.”

“Don’t talk any more. Let me think. I’ve got to figure it all out. It’s so important.”

After a long time she said, “It’s pretty cold-blooded.”

“It has to be, to be unconfessable.”

A minute or so later she sighed and he felt the warmth of her breath against his chest and throat. “I guess technically it doesn’t make a hell of a big difference. Done is done, whatever number of times. I mean faithless is faithless.” Mirthless laugh. “Screwed is screwed.” She sat up slowly, sighed again. “I just don’t know. Be right back.”

She hitched to the edge of the bed and got up. She looked down at him. Her smile was sad and sardonic. “Don’t go away.”

She was in the bathroom about ten minutes. He heard the toilet flush, heard water running. She came back and knee-walked near him and folded down into the same position as before. She had the faint aroma of his special bath soap from Neiman-Marcus.

“Well... don’t expect any reaction this time, Aldo. I feel all tired and dead and dumpy. It’ll be just going through the motions. But I guess that will count. He could forgive once, I think. Not twice. I guess it’s probably better if I’m real dead this time.”

“Permission to go ahead.”

“Yes. I guess so.”

“This is a deliberate infidelity, remember. You have decided, all things considered, that you want me to make love to you again.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up. Please. Just do it.”

He soon confirmed his suspicion that she had decided that she would not let herself feel any pleasure. But she was a strong and healthy young woman. Her nap had rested her. He had given her a rationalization and justification for making love. She made just a few whining complaints, and then she began to let herself be carried along. After a time she began to move ahead on her own momentum, and when he recognized the plateau condition, he began holding her back to give all her tensions time to build to a good peak. When finally she began to pull at him with frantic strength, arching impossibly wider for him, he moved her into it.

When they were both ended, and he lay still between the slack, sprawled bounty of her long handsome legs, and when his head had drowsed heavily downward to within the range of all her soft little blurred kissings, her voice saying a word in half whisper, “Darlee, darlee, darlee, darlee,” he had another memory of that day his grandfather had shot the woodchuck. His grandfather had cut a short sturdy length of branch, and they had tied the back feet of the giant groundhog together and then inserted the stick between his legs. They picked him up that way and carried him back down the road to the farm. Aldo had carried the rifle, and they had each held one end of the stick.

The morning sun had, by then, turned the early dampness of the dirt road back to pale fine talcum dust. As they walked, Aldo saw thick drops of blood fall from the muzzle of the dead beast. They would strike the dust and roll into strange dark little dusty balls, almost perfectly round.

It was on that walk that he suddenly knew, with terrifying finality, that everything and everybody had to die, without exception.

Both these parts of the woodchuck story would have to be told to Anne Faxton, so that she would understand. And there was that final part, of trying to eat the woodchuck stew that evening, then suddenly running out through the pantry into the back yard, bending over in the sunset light under the apple tree and vomiting, then suddenly feeling his grandfather’s only hand on his back, and hearing him say softly, “There, boy. There, now.”

He had managed to so intensify the big girl’s release that she was a long time in softening and fading into her total relaxation and lethargy. He thought of the terrible swiftness of himself, when every bit of consciousness, awareness, identity had turned and folded inward toward the deep hot ecstasy of sensation, demand, and spending. Too swift, too much like the cracking flight of the rifle slug. He lay, awaiting the thong around his ankles, the insertion of the lift stick, the long swaying, head-down journey down the long dusty road for the dead beast.

He gradually became aware of the way her breathing had changed. It had deepened into the unmistakable cadence of sleep. He had known a few others who reacted the same way. They would come tumbling off the edge of climax and fall all the way down into total sleep, automatic and inevitable.

Bellinger carefully disengaged himself, edged over to the side of the bed, swung his legs out, and stood up slowly, yawning, scratching the sweat-moist hair of chest and belly. Liz Rountree lay sprawled in deep sleep, on her back, head lolled to the side, toward him, hair thatched partially over her eyes. Her hands were slack fists, the left resting on her belly, moving to each breath, the right on the inside of her out-turned right thigh. In the glow of the distant desk light every softened convexity of her body had a highlight sheen of exertive moisture.

He picked up the blue-gray spread from the carpeting at the foot of the bed and floated it out, drifted it carefully down to cover her. Each inhalation began with a small rattling sound, and each exhalation made a small puhhh sound as pressure forced her swollen lips apart. He smiled sadly down at her. Sweet wistful affection and gratitude. A large lovely troubled child, and just as wonderfully orgasmic as he had guessed she might be. They were a fine couple, Lee and Liz. He would take gentle and understanding care of both of them. It was the least he could do.

He took a quick shower, noting once again the slightly unpleasant chemical odor of the water and the hardness that inhibited proper sudsing. But now it was Larssen’s problem. He turned out the bright fluorescence before opening the bathroom door.

He dressed, putting on oyster-white slacks, a pale blue juayabera, his Mexican sandals. In her sleep she had rolled onto her right side, pulled her knees up. He took her small canvas beach bag over to the desk and found the key to 18-B. He emptied his dispatch case of reports and documents and hung the do not disturb sign on the outer latch when he left the room.

He had to go down and cross the bright area between the pool and the long window wall beyond which was the shadowy, busy bar and lounge. He went into B wing to the far end, let himself into 18, and turned on the lights, pulled the draperies across, and then made a careful selection of what she would wear. Fresh, fragile underthings, white sandals, a crisp-looking shift in broad horizontal awning stripes of blue, green, and white.

He packed the cosmetics, lotions, sprays he thought she might need. He found her hairbrush in the bathroom, and it reminded him to put in her toothbrush and toothpaste. The two toothbrushes hung side by side on little porcelain clips inside the medicine cabinet. Symbol of sweet and homely domesticity. He felt another warm flow of affection for both of them. A fine young couple. Gentle people. The one with the ivory-colored handle and the black bristles was masculine gender. The one with the transparent pink handle was feminine. Eye makeup kit. Yes. Anything else? Inventory in order, sir. All necessities accounted for.

He turned out the lights, let himself out, started down the corridor, and saw Anne Faxton coming toward him, wearing a yellow canvas beach coat over her bikini. She was walking oddly, carefully.